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The team is joined by Guest Kats Rosie Burbidge, Stephen Jones, Mathilde Pavis, and Eibhlin Vardy, and by InternKats Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo, Hayleigh Bosher, Tian Lu and Cecilia Sbrolli.

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Logos wanted. Last week the IPKat called for readers' submissions of new logos for the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market when it is rebranded as the European Union Intellectual Property Office. The Kat has received some good entries, but not nearly enough! Come on, put your designer's clogsglovespyjamas hat on and send us your best efforts.

Forthcoming events. Do please check out the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page -- there's plenty to educate the student, to inform the expert, to advise the investor, to connect the networker and to amuse the dilettante. Some of the events are even free, or reduced-rate for readers of this weblog.

Talking of forthcoming events, the IPKat's friends in the Competition Law Association are holding one under the title "Intellectual Property Enterprise Court Practice". The speakers on the topic of this most welcome of courts are Judge Hacon himself, District Judge Melissa Clarke and Angela Fox (RGC Jenkins & Co, author of this book on the subject). The date: Monday 18 May, 2015, 6 pm. The venue: Courtroom 1, Competition Appeal Tribunal, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Place, London WC1A 2EB. Click here for details.

Which way round? "Multilateralism at Risk: traditional intellectual property treaties and the threat of trade and investment agreements" is the challenging title of a forthcoming seminar at the Dickson Poon School Law, King's College London from 5 to 7 pm on Tuesday 26 May, in conjunction with the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. Speakers are Sam Ricketson, Shira Perlmutter and Federico Ortino and you can register by clicking here[Merpel finds herself pondering whether one could ask the question the other way round: are trade and investment agreements threatened by a persistent longing for multilateralism? But that's another matter ...].

Around the weblogs. While Merpel has posted at length (here and here) on the tussle of Big Bus and Ticketogo as to whether Big Bus can get disclosure of the licences that Ticketogo has granted to third parties in patent infringement proceedings in which it is the defendant, PatLit carries a short, sharp summary by Ian Wood -- who acted for Big Bus and who tells this Kat that Ticketogo has already received leave to appeal. EU Law Radar carries a helpful review of Case C-160/15 GS Media[noted by the IPKat here and here], a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union on what the author describes as porno hyperlinks and hyperleaks. IP Finance takes a look at the PatentVue weblog. Something to read? The Unitary EU Patent System, edited by Justine Pila and Christopher Wadlow, was published last month by Hart Publishing. It's neither a practitioners' manual nor a collation of academic abstractions, but rather a many-layered appraisal of this curious legislative package. According to the web-blurb:

The purpose of this book is to explore the key substantive, methodological, and institutional issues raised by the proposed unitary EU patent system contained in EU Regulations 1257/2012 and 1260/2012 and the Unified Patent Court Agreement 2013. The originality of this work lies in its uniquely broad approach, taking six different perspectives (historical, constitutional, international, competition, institutional and forward-looking) on the proposed EU patent system. This means that the book offers a multi-authored and all round appraisal of the proposed unitary system from experts in patent law, EU constitutional law, private international law and competition law, as well as leading figures from the worlds of legal practice, the bench and the European Patent Office. The unitary patent system raises issues of foundational importance in the fields of patent and intellectual property law, EU law and legal harmonisation, which it is the purpose of the book to engage with.

This blogger mentioned its publication on PatLit not so long ago, but he has now had a chance to see it in the flesh, as it were. Justine and Chris have assembled an impressive array of contributors from the UK and beyond, so he'd expect it to be good. Since the new European patent package is still capable of being described as "work in progress", it's unsurprising that this volume is described as the "First Edition": clearly we can expect a sequel. Further details are available from the publisher's web-page for it, here; there's no risk of a rupture because it's hand-luggage friendly.

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